Creatique

A mobile application to allow artists to review and rate the quality of art supplies.

Iterations

Problem Statement

Scope

Tools

Pain points

How can artists make well-informed purchases?

Currently, there is no solution that allows artists to openly research products on one community-oriented platform before making buying decisions.

Project Scope

Role

As the Product Designer I involved myself with envisioning the purpose and appearance of this platform. Because it was birthed from my inspiration, it has been my responsibility to be there for every stage of this project: from conception to implementation.

As Product Designer it was my responsibility to take charge on the "whys" and "hows" of our team's decisions. In my additional role as the Design Lead I planned the UI interface, gathered feedback with user research, and applied this research to high fidelity designs.

Timeline

I was dedicated to a self-set three month timeline to complete everything I needed for research and design. My work has since been passed on to the development stage, where implementation is still ongoing. Development is projected to finish by Winter 2024.

Team

As the Product Designer I have taken charge of the research and vision necessary for all features and processes. I have onboarded two developers to engineer the back end of this product. Together we make a team of three people.

Tools

My four preferred tools were Adobe Photoshop to create raster designs, Adobe Illustrator to create vector designs, Figma to compile all our designs into screens, and Miro to draft the team's decisions and plans.

Tools

Style guide

Our style guide gave our team a visual direction.

Mind Map

The mind map was the project's first step to understanding my problem and my solution at their most abstract and rudimentary levels.

Flow chart

This chart was used to help the team understand the flow between screens and how the flow is impacted by user decisions.

Persona

Our persona was used to guide user-focused decisions.

Pain points

Is it enough?

Early in Creatique's production I found myself wondering: will it be sufficient to simply let users leave star ratings and a few words? Can this solve the presented issue, or will more processes be needed? I gathered input from a variety of artists and concluded that the experience could be improved with more features such as image sharing, review ratings, and item collections.

Community

My perception of Creatique's limits was expanded when my primary dev collaborator presented a compelling thought: "How can users set themselves apart and also use their individuality to connect with each other?" It got me thinking how community could be achieved on a platform with reviews as the primary focus. Balancing the line between blogging functions and primary functions was challenging. The balance could not have been tuned to perfection without rounds of user testing.

The logo

The logo underwent many rounds of iterations, exploring different relationships between paintbrushes and the letter "C." Some iterations focused on one or the other, some focused on a blend of the two, and some took a contemporary approach of abandoning the brush and the letter to focus instead on modern geometry styles. Finding the right look from all possible styles was difficult and took many weeks of revision.

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